James and Ellen White took their stand purely from the scriptural evidence to which their minds had been directed in the Bates tract. Then on the first Sabbath in April, 1847, seven months after they began to keep and teach the Seventh-day Sabbath, the Lord gave a vision to Mrs. White at Topsham, Maine, in which the importance of the Sabbath was stressed. She saw the tables of the law in the ark in the heavenly sanctuary, and a halo of light about the fourth commandment. See pages 32-35 for the account of this vision. The position previously taken from the study of the word of God was confirmed. The vision also helped to broaden the believer's concept of Sabbath observance. In this revelation, Mrs. White was carried down to the close of time and saw the Sabbath as the great testing truth on which men decide whether to serve God or to serve an apostate power. Looking back in 1874 to this experience, she wrote:
“I believed the truth upon the Sabbath question before I had seen anything in vision in reference to the Sabbath. It was months after I had commenced keeping the Sabbath before I was shown its importance and its place in the third angel's message.”—E. G. White Letter 2, 1874.
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